How School Districts, Foundations Can Connect with Alumni via Social Media

posted by Jim Burgraff | 841sc
August 21, 2017

Social media offers a powerful tool for schools, districts and educational foundations to engage their key stakeholders—including alumni. You can use social media to connect with alumni, provide updates on events, share important stories and ensure they remain engaged with the success of your schools for the long term.

Specifically, you can leverage social media for the following:

Help alumni find jobs

A surefire way to get alumni involved with your district via social media is to regularly highlight the many ways you can continue to help them. Hosting a job board and providing regular updates on career opportunities offers considerable value to your alumni. You may also partner with employers that may prefer to hire graduates of a local school or district.

Fundraising and bond measure opportunities

Fundraising has become critical in today’s world of shrinking budgets and revenue limits. Creating a platform to share your school or district’s story can help you to make the case for additional financial support from the community through a referendum or bond measure.

You may also use social media to generate buzz around district fundraising events. Facebook Events, for example, provides districts with an easy way to automatically remind alumni and other stakeholders about upcoming efforts through which they can support their alma mater.

Collaborate with parents

Many of your district’s alumni may now have children who attend your schools. To that end, reaching out to and engaging parents is another important way that you can increase your interaction with alumni via social media. Posting short synopses of school events or writing about the topics being covered in certain classes can help you advance your district’s narrative.

Promote alumni events

You can use social media to highlight your district’s specific alumni network and events, such as class reunions. Alumni groups can spring up organically on social media, so routinely using your district’s presence to emphasize events started by official alumni groups can help former students avoid confusion when they are trying to reconnect with their old classmates.

As you focus on your alumni engagement strategy, consider the important role of social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. By offering value to your alumni, you can keep them engaged and garner the support you need both now and in the future.